Ok, this has been an issue that has bugged me from first report by the SEO industry….
The statement is that sitemaps have no SEO value to your on page SEO

Though I disagree, and have tested this numerous times.

Let’s fix that statement:
Sitemaps dont provide SEO however they DO  help the search engines find your pages better and quicker. SEO is the art of getting found in the Search Engines, therefore sitemaps do off er SEO value!

OK, take that a step further and simplify:
Sitemaps help get pages found by search engines = SEO is about getting found!Create an HTML sitemap AND a sitemap.xml
– Submit your sitemp.xml to Google Webmasters
– Check back later that it submitted with with no errors
(Note, this is only 1 part of SEO’ing your site properly and NOT  end all)

Takeaway:
Don’t forget to to do this!